1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments relate generally to processing payments. More specifically, one or more embodiments relate to methods and systems of processing payments using payment aggregators.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Commerce applications allow users to perform real-world monetary transactions over a communications network. Examples of commerce applications include websites and native applications. Commerce applications allow users to purchase goods and/or services using a checkout process. The checkout process can involve providing a user with various payment methods. Examples of payment methods include traditional payment methods, such as credit/debit cards, and alternative payment methods, such as virtual wallets, mobile phone carrier-billing services, and prepaid stored value cards/vouchers.
Often, a commerce application will use a payment facilitator to perform at least a part of the checkout process. Examples of payment facilitators include e-commerce payment services, social network payment services, and virtual wallet payment services. Payment facilitators ordinarily use a single payment aggregator to process all certain payment methods provided to the user. Examples of payment aggregators include online payment aggregator services and mobile payment aggregator services. Typically, once the user selects a payment method, the commerce application and the payment facilitator will use the payment aggregator to complete the checkout process. Accordingly, the payment aggregator usually obtains payment authorization and securely passes payment information to a payment processor for the user's selected payment method.
While using a payment aggregator can provide a commerce application with access to additional payment methods, one payment aggregator for payment method processing can be inadequate. For instance, a single payment aggregator typically offers a limited number of payment methods and often lacks additional payment methods potentially available to the user through other payment aggregators. It is common that the user wants to use a particular payment method, but that payment method is not supported through the single payment aggregator. As a result, users can become frustrated with the limited number of payment methods available, which can often cause users to abandon their transactions.
A single payment aggregator can also restrict the payment facilitator to the transaction fees offered by the payment aggregator. Usually, the payment facilitator and the payment aggregator agree on transaction fees before the payment facilitator begins using the payment aggregator. However, since the payment facilitator commonly uses a single payment aggregator for processing certain payment methods, this typically limits the ability of the payment facilitator to negotiate better transaction fees with the payment aggregator. Consequently, using a single payment aggregator can become cost-prohibitive or less profitable for the payment facilitator.
Commerce applications, their users, and payment facilitators can also be limited to the reliability and availability of the single payment aggregator that processes certain payment methods. For instance, degradation in the quality of service provided by the single payment aggregator can be caused by an increase in transactions being processed by the payment aggregator. Such degradation can cause commerce applications and payment facilitators to lose business as a result of users abandoning their transactions. As another example, a single payment aggregator can have an unexpected outage or downtime due to regularly scheduled maintenance. Such outages and downtimes can also result in users abandoning their transactions, thereby adversely affecting commerce applications and payment facilitators.
Payment facilitators also lack control over the processing of transactions because payment facilitators typically only use one payment aggregator. For instance, payment facilitators are unable to route transactions to other more profitable or reliable payment aggregators. In some cases, a payment facilitator can overwhelm its lone payment aggregator because the payment facilitator lacks the ability to distribute the workload of transactions. This lack of control can prevent payment facilitators from optimizing the service provided to commerce applications and their users.
Accordingly, there are a number of considerations to be made in payment processing and processing payments using payment aggregators.